Dr Paul Thorsnes

Dr Paul Thorsnes is a senior lecturer in Economics at the University of Otago. He specialises in urban economics with a focus on housing. Paul leads the Personalised Energy Advice workstream of the Energy Cultures project with support from Dr. Rebecca Ford.

This project adapts existing web-based decision-support software to create an interactive on-line tool that helps households and SMEs sift through the vast and growing information about energy efficient technology and behaviours.

From users who indicate willingness to share their use of the tool for research purposes, Paul plans to contribute to the research that explores the heterogeneity across households and SMEs in preferences for the many attributes of energy efficiency improvements.

Paul hopes that the decision support tools and the research into preferences will be useful not only to householders and business managers, but also to policymakers and public and private suppliers of energy efficiency services and advice.